Eclipse Buckminster

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The Buckminster Project is an Eclipse (software) technology subproject, and thus in open source, which focuses on component assembly.

Buckminster facilitates straight forward sharing of complex assemblies of software components. It is particularly useful for building and sharing virtual distros, distributions of software components which share components across multiple software projects and repositories.

A Buckminster CQUERY (component query) names a component assembly. Using a CQUERY, Buckminster can find and (transitively) locate all the components necessary to complete that particular configuration. A CQUERY is typically published by a developer (or development team) to denote their work: those interested in accessing and using this software can ask Buckminster to fetch everything necessary by quoting the CQUERY.

The process which Buckminster implements to transitively locate and then download and install a full set of components for a particular CQUERY is called materialisation.

A Buckminster RMAP (resource map) is associated with a CQUERY, and lists one or more software repositories in which appropriate components can be found. Many popular repository formats are supported, including Concurrent Versions System, Subversion, Apache Maven, Perforce and Eclipse platform infrastructures.

A Buckminster CSPEC (component specification) lists appropriate attributes of a component such as how to build it and on what other components i depends. CSPECs are frequently automatically generated by Buckminster based on meta-information available elsewhere within repositories and the build environment. Automatically generated CSPECs can be manually via CSPECX CSPEC eXtensions".

A Buckminster BOM (bill of materials) lists in full all the details necessary to fulfill a particular CQUERY, and is automatically generated by Buckminster. BOMs are sometimes saved and re-submitted so as to ensure that specific users materialise precisely the same components, in the right versions, as one another.

Buckminster CQUERYs, RMAPs, CQUERYs and BOMs are specified in XML.